Leadership and Legacy: Oral Health Milestones in Maternal and Child Health Promotion and Prevention OHRC

1906

First free school dental clinic opened
First free school dental clinic in the United States in the 52nd Street School. Reproduced with permission from the New York Historical Society.
  • First free school dental clinic opened

Background

During the 1890s, municipal health departments and schools began hiring medical inspectors to examine students suspected of harboring infectious diseases. Despite the cursory nature of the examinations, they identified a variety of diseases and nutritional deficiencies. Untreated dental caries (tooth decay) was found in nearly 90 to 95 percent of school-age children. As a consequence, public health officials and school hygiene proponents proposed the establishment of school dental clinics where children from families with low incomes could receive free or subsidized oral health care.

In 1906, The Children’s Aid Society opened the first free school dental clinic
in the United States.

Impact

By 1930, approximately 1.2 million children and adolescents had been treated in clinics, representing nearly two-thirds of all patients treated in clinics. Of these children and adolescents, almost half were served in public schools. School-based dental clinics were found most often in the Northeast, with the South having the fewest. The clinics also offered postdoctoral training and employment for recently graduated dentists.

Sources

The Children’s Aid Society. History of Firsts.

Meckel RA. 2002. Delivering oral health services to children in the past: The rise and fall of children’s dental clinics. Ambulatory Pediatrics 2(4):255–260.

Schlossman SL, Brown J, Sedlak M. 1986. The Public School in American Dentistry. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.

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